Onlap’s “Miracle”

Skyscrapers cast a menacing shadow over the city streets below as we look upon the opening shots of the new music video for Onlap’s “Miracle,” and in their vague darkness we find a solitary soul passing out flyers emblazoned with but a single sentence: WE NEED A MIRACLE. The band starts to play in the background, starting off with a constricted vocal that will set the haunting tone for every ounce of mayhem that’s about to come barreling out of the silence just moments from now, and our protagonist begins the task of passing his message to every person who passes him by. Shots of his efforts are intermingled with others that see Onlap playing the song in an abandoned warehouse – which is perhaps the only venue fitting of the volume and pure artistic intensity that this track pumps out at the drop of a hat. We’re not even sixty-seconds into “Miracle,” and already this group has got us right where they want us; planted in front of the provocative images gracing our screen.

There’s something really motivational about the visual spectacle that this music video contains, and you don’t have to be ascribed to one political ideology over another to appreciate the substance of what Onlap is trying to tell us in the adjoining lyrics here. From how I interpret the entire narrative, I think that the band wants us not to consider who is leading the way in the world at the moment, but where we’re being directed to, regardless of race, religion or creed.

There hasn’t been a time in recent memory as plagued with international controversy as the present has been, and it’s a safe assumption to make that, no matter what part of the earth you call home, you’re more likely to have felt the burden of such conflict than not. “Miracle” isn’t about placing blame or waging a war against one group over another; this track is about hope, strength through adversity and consistently believing in something rather than fighting over anything. Onlap is giving us a public service announcement in this song and its music video, and it just so happens to be accompanied by the kind of deafeningly distorted melody that 2019 needed to feel complete.

“Miracle” concludes amidst clouds of red smoke, a bold reference to some of the imagery to come out of the band’s French homeland amid all of the tensions that the Parisian people have witnessed coming to a head in the last couple of years, and even after the music stops, the lingering thrust of the beat remains present in the air around us for quite some time. I wasn’t sure what I was going to see when I was told to check out this new video from Onlap, but I’m pleased to say that what they’ve created in “Miracle” goes above and beyond what the status quo for modern protest music requires. This is a sophisticated song that demands a reaction out of anyone listening to its biting lyrics, and its video is absolutely one of my picks for hottest European rock release of the season.

Mindy McCall